I think I over-bond with coffeeshop baristas. I keep it well-hidden, of course. Outwardly, I have impeccable boundaries. I never do any weird oversharing. I like to think I am a commensurate and equilateral sharer of the highest order, my repartee almost painfully appropriate.

But it’s all an act. Deep down inside, I’m all over the map. This morning, for example, Suzy was working at my favorite neighborhood coffee shop. We chatted for several minutes, as always. Then I judiciously wrapped up our small talk with a note of formality, all but adding a curt bow and a crisp Prussian click of my boot heels.

Emotionally, however, I didn’t really want to end our chat. Some hidden part of me longed for more connection – to laugh about our favorite TV comedies, exchange life philosophes, and world views. It’s not the least bit sexual or romantic. I have the same latent urge with my favorite men baristas. 

For example, there used to be, among the baristas, this young but haggard- looking, weather-beaten, chain-smoking guy. He was probably in his mid-twenties, but he always appeared like an old hungover Walter Matthau. I can’t recall the guy’s name. But he was awesome. And, magnificently enough, he’d always spin my kind of music in the coffee shop – the Clash, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Television, Lou Reed. 

I’d get so excited. If he wasn’t busy helping a customer I’d bound up to the counter and he and I would talk about whatever music he was playing. And again, just like with Suzy, some part of me secretly yearned to plunge into long discussions over afternoon beers, discussing the minutiae of these musicians – why DEVO’s cover of Satisfaction is the best cover anyone has ever done of anything; David Byrne’s bubblegum pop influences; the incomparable bass-lines of Bruce Thomas in Elvis Costello’s first band, the Attractions. 

Now, I am a reasonably functional grown up, so in actuality I do know that if one of these baristas were to actually ask me to grab a beer, I would think it was bizarre. And I know that we’d have nothing in common and, as we sipped our beers, we’d bore each other to death. The whole thing would be awkward. But the yearning remains. 

It’s not that I don’t have close, dear friends – including, front and center, my amazing wife. They and I share with each other vulnerably and exuberantly. But still, there’s this other part of me, a part that feels a naked and insatiable longing for contact. And apparently, it cannot, at least at present, be appeased by actual human intimacy. It’s just sitting there, frozen in the shadows, hungering for connection, waiting to be opened to by me, and held by the Nectarous Love-Juju of Being.   

The thing is, it can’t be touched by the Nectarous Love-Juju of Being while I am busy disowning it, suppressing it, dissociating from it. Which I tend to do. Unconscious parts of us are places in our body-minds where we are contracted, constricted, recoiled, clenched. And then the Nectarous Love-Juju of Being (that I access through my Guru) can’t get in. 

“By tendency, ego-bound individuals invest only a portion of themselves in practice of the Way. They bring to school only the most superficial aspect of themselves–their social, outward character. Behind that superficial character is a hidden personality…You must become sensitive to this hidden personality and oblige yourself to go to school with your whole personality.…you simply cannot practice any better than you practice at the feeling level, in the emotional domain of your hidden personality…

…[you have a certain level of self-understanding]…but another dimension is almost entirely untouched. It is almost virgin insanity…It is like an anchor lying in the sea while the ship is trying to move at top speed. You must bring yourself to school at that level…it is a terrible ordeal. I acknowledge this….It cannot be avoided. There is no way at all that we can set it aside and say that spiritual life is just a pleasantry. Spiritual life is not meditation, seeing visions, and going to heaven at death. It is a very, very difficult ordeal…

                                                             —Adi Da Samraj

What, you ask, might bring YOUR unconscious shenanigans more into the light of day? Why, subscribing to this blog, of course! How could it not? Go ahead! You know you want to! Eets only wafer-thin!